Directed by Steven Spielberg; Screenplay by Tom Stoppard

He was a golden boy. "Dream of flying," his mother urged, and the boy did. Gifted and coddled, he could pick up any one of his toy planes and send it soaring, ever higher, never landing, as buoyant and restless as his imagination. Then reality brought his world crashing to earth. The boy, poor indomitable thing, had a lot to learn about gravity.

In Empire of the Sun, the boy is James Graham, eleven-year-old son of an English merchant in Shanghai at the first shell burst of World War II in the Pacific. Behind the camera is Jim's spiritual cousin, Steven...